The Humanity of Animals and the Animality of Humans

Category: Socialism

That’s me in the picture. I’ll be 75 years old on July 26, 2019 (Mick will be 76) and the Cuban Revolution will be 66 – 66 years since the seminal battle on July 26 when Castro’s rebels attached a military barracks. 60 years since seizing power in 1959. Cuba is arguably the most purely socialist society – and most successfully so – in the world. We need to embrace this fact. Free excellent health care, 100% literacy, great schools, international solidarity, cooperative spirit, exquisite cars, terrific beer, delicious ice cream, music, dance, and visual arts to die for. Indomitable […]

Happy Mayday! I proposed in my previous blog post [http://henryhitz.com/happy-earth-day/ ] that catastrophic climate change could not be stopped under capitalism, that only the central planning that comes with socialism could prevent the catastrophe. But what is socialism? The word has been so dragged through the holocaust and the gulag that one is tempted to drop it and come up with a better term. But Bernie Sanders has done us the great favor of embracing the term. I know there are people who wish he wouldn’t use it, especially since his core proposals are not really socialist in the sense […]

MY SUMMER VACATION: I went to Spain on vacation this summer. Traveling is overrated. It took us five days to get back to Oakland – don’t fly Norwegian Airlines. I was surprised how prosperous the country was, how fabulous their transportation system. Barcelona has 4 different ways to get where you’re going: subway, underground light rail, surface light rail, and buses. Subway trains were three minutes apart. I wasn’t aware until I returned that Barcelona and read the New Yorker that “Barcelona is the heart of a new global political phenomenon known as municipalism.” I read up on the Spanish […]

If capitalism collapsed on a world-wide basis in 1929, as I believe, then we have to face the fact that it was saved by World War II – that the combination of militarism, socialized spending on armaments, the destruction of the infrastructure of Europe and Japan, and the drastic reduction of population in places like the USSR and Germany was what saved capitalism, and provided for its post-war regeneration. There is nothing in place – the UN lol? – to prevent the same scenario from repeating itself. Sooner or later the economic system will collapse again. We dodged a bullet […]

The election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) could be a turning point in the hemisphere. The early 2000s saw a proliferation of socialism in Latin America, not just Cuba any more. Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Argentina. Of course El Salvador and Nicaragua, who fought and defeated the United States. The 2010s saw a right-wing resurgence. It’s one fight. We are one people. It’s not good enough to back “humane” immigration policies, okay, no f-ing concentration camps for the tender aged. Obama didn’t incarcerate people, but he did deport a record number of undocumented. This should be a […]

Somehow I am still optimistic for the long term. Short term not so much. As MLK said, “the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice.” I believe this is true. Short term, I think we’re in deep shit. Concentration camps for tender aged children? How bad does it have to get before the left realizes that it is our disunity which has fostered this situation? I’m going to be harsh here. People who vote their “conscience” instead of voting strategically are guilty of what we used to call bourgeois individualism, the antithesis of solidarity. The objective is […]

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. The ruling capitalist class, internationally, sees the writing on the wall. The elites’ attempts to establish something like fascism are acts of desperation. The tax bill is a reflection of the current weakness of the working class, a chance for the owners to get it while they can. It’s not just greed. They need this money to negotiate their survival once the working class gets it together to fight back. Consider the advances of working class power in the twentieth century. The Russian Revolution in 1917. The New […]

Ever since the October Revolution 100 years ago today, socialists have spoken as if revolution – the seizure of state power from the capitalists by violent or nonviolent means – has been the be all and end all. Yet capitalism emerged gradually within the belly of the beast, as it were. It could be argued that capitalism emerged in the process of feudal societies trading with each other. While feudal societies taxed their peasants so that the aristocratic elites could enjoy the fruits of surplus, it was the merchants involved in trade that were able to accumulate sufficient capital to […]

One of Lanchester’s points in his New Yorker article, “The Case Against Civilization” that I wrote about in my last blog is that it took 4000 years for hunter-gatherer societies to settle down and adopt an agricultural system. They were reluctant because hunting and gathering worked just fine for them, thank you very much. He doesn’t say it, but one can surmise that ultimately force was involved, because once agriculture predominates, you also get taxation, writing – originally developed to keep track of taxes – and the State, with the development of classes, one of the oppressor and one of […]

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, I want to start a conversation about the big picture, the transition from capitalism to socialism. Let’s start at the beginning. An article by John Lanchester appeared in the September 18th New Yorker entitled “The Case Against Civilization” argues that our hunter-gatherer ancestors had better lives than we do: African tribes that still live the hunter-gatherer lifestyle “work” about 17 hours a week to find adequate food – 2300 calories, about what we’re supposed to eat. While Lanchester doesn’t mention Engels and barely mentions the rise of class society, I […]

Posts navigation

Squirrels in the Wall

New book coming October 2019

Squirrels in the Wall―a novel told in stories by a collection of interspecies voices―presents a unique and darkly hilarious blend of human and animal perspectives in a single setting on a Wisconsin lake. The stories provide a kaleidoscope of heartbreak among both human and animal characters as they confront abuse and death.

“They call me Herziger, but my real name is Woof,” one of the stories opens. “They call me a dachshund, but in reality, I am just a dog. I live with my mother among a pack of wild humans in a big house on a lake.” In the second story, “Squirrels in the Wall,” Herzie’s “human,” Barney Blatz, experiences a fire in that house when he is just four. The stories follow Barney from infancy to death, tracing the epic, ongoing conflict between him and Father―a bumbling tyrant guilty of shocking abuse but also capable of poignant redemption.

On this rollicking journey, we meet a suicidal toad, a cat, two mice, a bee, grandfather’s ghost, and a turtle who possesses Barney in a climactic tale of environmental activism gone awry. Other stories reflect the points of view of Barney’s mother, sister, and older brother; together, they construct a collage of spectacular family dysfunction ― and of healing love.

Henry Hitz laces this riveting, thought provoking journey, Squirrels in the Wall, with dollops of juicy humor. Dogs, bees, a fox, humans, turtles, and other assorted critters–both dead and alive–all ponder, question, and wonder about that line blurring life and death. “Life is death’s dream?” Under the masterful hand of Mr. Hitz, we are in for a thoroughly enjoyable and informative read.

–Francine Thomas Howard, author of two Amazon bestsellers: Page from a Tennessee Journal, and The Duke of Union County

Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address

White Knight

In 1977, a fireman named Dan White saved a woman and her babies from a fire in the Geneva Towers apartments in San Francisco. It is this scene which opens White Knight, the story of one witness to that fire, Barney Blatz, and his entanglement with the political and personal catastrophe which followed. With the November, 1978 Jonestown Massacre of 912 people and, three days later, White’s murder of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the city and Barney unraveled. “There’s a bumper sticker that reads ‘Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once,’ but this November, it isn’t working.”

A powerful tale set in San Francisco during the turbulent late ‘70s. Hitz makes you feel that you were there, and shows how we came to grasp that ‘the personal is political’ and, alas, vice versa. An elegant debut novel.